Vladimir Potapov

T

he re-election of president Vladimir Putin clearly demonstrated: he received the people’s absolute mandate of confidence to carry out reforms in Russia. In fact, he started these reforms three weeks before the day of voting (March 14) by announcing the change of the government.
Putin based the choice of Mikhail Fradkov to be prime minister on his ‘decency and experience’. True, even in the opinion of the president’s political opponents, the present head of the government "has no connections with any clan". What is more, he has "a recognizable face in Europe".
When signing decrees on the government composition, Vladimir Putin stressed that the new compact cabinet is "the result of the administrative reform". One of its main tasks is to eliminate excessive bureaucratic procedures and generally upgrade the efficiency of the economy’s state management.
The president has all reasons to regard the new executive structure as the first result of the administrative reform. If there were 30 ministers in Kasyanov’s Cabinet, the one of Fradkov consists of just 17 members. As for vice prime ministers, their number has always varied and it has depended, to a greater extent, not on functions but on personalities: this post has often been an intermediate point for further staff transfers. Now there is only one vice prime minister remaining but he has a much wider authority. This key post is occupied by Alexander Zhukov, the former chairman of the budget committee and deputy speaker of the parliament. Bodies of the executive branch have three levels: law-making (i.e. having the authority to draft laws and issue normative acts) ministries; federal agencies and services tasked to carry out decisions of ministries and, finally, special oversight bodies.
The essence of the reform does not come to just a numerical reduction of the management staff. The main task is to make its work more transparent, controllable and, thus, more efficient. By contrast with the previous years, the departments are prohibited to establish rules of the game and to judge its participants under these rules. The role of the ministries is very much strengthened. Ministers are not to become independent politicians. But, anyway, they are empowered to make political decisions.
Describing today’s structure and functions of the Cabinet, Mikhail Fradkov pointed out that ‘shortening’ the list of issues that will be supervised by the government will allow "to get away from the practice of making irresponsible decisions". He based innovations on findings of the administrative reform commission, which recognized as excessive 25% of functions assigned to the executive bodies.
Andrei Illarionov, the Russian president’s economic advisor, explained that the administrative reform should free the government from "harmful and unneeded" functions. "The principal task of the reform will be accomplished, if we succeed in making the government a more mobile and a faster reacting body to manage the country by reducing the number of ministries and abolishing duplicate functions of various departments", he said.
The head of the government took upon himself a personal responsibility for conducting the administrative reform. Mikhail Fradkov does not mind to be called "a technocrat", as he is being labeled in the media, and he is gradually getting accustomed to the role of a public official. The main goals of the government, as Fradkov declares, are to reduce the poverty level, raise the well-being of citizens, strengthen guarantees of security and ensure a stable economic growth. Fradkov also believes that the Cabinet should thoroughly analyze the current situation in the economy and social sphere. He lists support of science and improvement of the staff training system among primary tasks.
At the same time some components of the government structure have to be completed and adjusted. In order to assist Fradkov, the Kremlin assigned former head of Vladimir Putin’s election campaign Dmitry Kozak, one of the officials, who are close to the president. Kozak was given the rank of a minister. Having been earlier the first deputy head of the Kremlin administration (since October 31, 2003), he worked on ‘special projects’ and, above all, on the government reform. Now Kozak will have to get this project into shape and perfect it.
Among members of the new Cabinet German Gref, who has a liberal reputation, has gained the most from the reshuffling. The Ministry of Economics, which he heads, has secured a considerably more authority as well as control over more federal agencies. The traditional functions of the general economic planning, forecasting and external economic activity are supplemented with several most important directions: privatization, land relations, customs, tariff policy, support of entrepreneurship and the advertisement market. But it would be too early to describe it as ‘a super-ministry’. Such a burden of responsibilities could turn out to be beyond its strength. In the past Gref shared this burden with his deputies (there were 16 of them), who could personally undertake more or less independent actions, including drafting laws, and who represented his direction of activity in the government. From now on Gref, like his Cabinet colleagues, is personally responsible for everything that is going on under his leadership in the ministry as well as in subordinate agencies and services.
By the way, the structure of agencies may also get transformed. There is an opinion in the White House (that is how Russians call the building, where offices of the prime minister, his deputies and government staff workers are located and where the government sessions are held) that their number may be cut down. But it is also possible that new agencies will emerge. One of them would surely be called upon to arrange ‘a breakthrough in the hi-tech sphere’, since the government head constantly demonstrates his adherence to the idea of ‘advancing the Russian economy in the promising hi-tech spheres’. To this end, as Fradkov says, there is a need to "actively develop the country’s technological, scientific and innovation potential", to ensure "the integration of all market participants, the State being the first". So far the scientific and technological potential has been underused in the country’s industry and things can hardly improve without pushing by the government.
It is symbolic that precisely the government reform opens the epoch of "mature Putin’, as either emotionally or ironically journalists and pundits call his second presidential term. Russia’s citizens are expecting that this epoch will bring a strengthened stability and real revival of the country utterly shaken by inconsistent reforms in Yeltsin’s decade. In his turn, the president himself is attentively watching the public reaction and he corrects actions by too zealous government officials. This has been proved, for example, by Putin’s rejection of the draft law "On gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, marches and pickets", which the new State Duma managed to pass in the first reading. Causing a sharply negative reaction of various political forces this draft law was perceived in the society as an attack on democratic rights of the country’s citizens and violation of the exiting constitution.
It is quite possible that the close attention of the society and the Kremlin’s present head to each other will allow to endure such a delicate moment in the administrative reform as the multiple increase of state officials’ salaries. This step is extremely unpopular in light of poverty among other ‘civil servants’, above all, teachers and doctors, whose salaries are recognized as unprecedentedly low even by Russian standards. There are attempts to justify it by comparing bureaucrats’ salaries with earnings of top managers at private companies: so far the gap between them has been too large. It is expected that the increase of payments for ‘state managers’ labor will result in raising the professionalism in this most important sphere and limiting the scope of corruption.
However, as vice prime minister Alexander Zhukov explains, this will not require additional budget expenses since the decision to increase salaries is being implemented through reducing the total number of the administrative staff workers.
Looking at the kaleidoscope of similar political steps by ‘mature Putin’ and statements about the necessity "to upgrade the quality and social responsibility of the state management" as a principal goal of the administrative reform, analysts tend to see the Kremlin’s most important task: to restore confidence of the society and business in the state power.

Profile:
Mikhail Fradkov was born on September 1, 1950, in Moscow. In 1972 graduated from the Moscow Machine Tool & Tool Material Institute and in 1981 from the Academy of Foreign Trade. From 1973 occupied various posts in the sphere of external economic relations, represented Russia in the GATT at the beginning of the 1990s.
From 1992 to 1997 was deputy, first deputy minister of external economic relations of the Russian Federation. From 1997 to 1998 was minister of external economic relations and trade of the Russian Federation. From 1998 to 1999 was chairman of the board of directors and later general director of Ingosstrakh.
From 1999 to 2000 was minister of trade of the Russian Federation. From May 2000 to March 2001 was first deputy secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. In March 2001 became head of the Federal Service of Tax Police (FSTP).
In March 2003, after FSTP was abolished, was appointed Russia’s plenipotentiary with the EU having the rank of a federal minister. In June 2003 was appointed special representative of the Russian president on development of relations with the European Union (while keeping the previous post).
Knows English and Spanish. Married. Has two children.

For the record
The administrative reform goes on. The order to reorganize the government staff signed by Mikhail Fradkov in late April has become one of its key stages, reported Dmitry Kozak, its former chief. Only 12 of 23 departments remain in the White House. The maximum number of the staff workers is limited to 954 people. About 20% of the staff workers or 240 people have been laid off. In Kozak’s words, "high-paid chiefs" have been among them. As a result, "salaries have been raised and expenses have been reduced", he noted.
The departments check the incoming documents, control their turnover and prepare opinions on normative acts. The staff has no chance to rewrite documents without ministers’ knowledge like it happened before, said Kozak. Disagreements are discussed at sessions with the prime minister, vice prime minister and chief of staff.
The informal status of aides to the prime minister (by the list of staff workers there should be 15 aides) has been upgraded. Some former ministers are among them. Aides to the prime minister are empowered – along with departments – to give opinions on normative documents. Besides, they are tasked to carry out specific assignments. In particular, they will become executive secretaries of the six government commissions.
Dmitry Kozak does not rule out that the structure will be further corrected. "I do not think that radical changes will take place. Although there are different nuances, the scheme as a whole is all right", he says.